Bluff-top Memphis enjoys the boon of river commerce without the bane of flood;
Nor is fishing what it used to be. The
swifter current has washed away many quiet
breeding spots.
Our next stop, Greenville, Mississippi, had
grim and tragic experiences during the great
flood of 1927. But William T. Wynn, a
Greenville attorney, recounted one of the
lighter incidents to us.
When the town was inundated, 10,000 low
land residents were evacuated to temporary
camps on the crest of the levee. They were
divided according to precincts, and each per
son had to report to the medical tent of his
own precinct to get typhoid shots. One woman
who came to the wrong place was flatly told:
688
"You don't belong here. You've got to get
vaccinated in your precinct."
"But why can't I get vaccinated in my
arm, like everybody else?" the woman asked.
From Greenville we drove 150 miles back to
Memphis, where we boarded the southbound
towboat Wake Island. We had made the
acquaintance of these craft during our travels
on the upper river. Diesel-powered work
horses of the Mississippi, they hustle their
staggering loads, some of them equal to the
cargo of two ocean-going freighters, up- and
downstream in a fraction of the time it once
took the romantic but cumbersome old stern
wheelers.